4
Email supplement
Embracing
email
By all accounts, the popularity of email marketing is increasing
at breakneck speed – but is it possible to have too much of a
good thing? Alex Blyth reports
T
he rise of email as a marketing tool grown even further to $57.25 for every
for B2B firms has been startling. dollar spent. It also compares very
According to the US Direct favourably to offline marketing. Again,
Marketing Association (DMA) according to the DMA, email generates
report ‘The power of direct 2.5 times as much response as direct
marketing’ in 2007, email marketing mail. The average response rate for direct
expenditure grew by 12.5 per cent for mail is 1.6 per cent, compared to 4.1 per
B2B firms between 2001 and 2006 and it cent for email.
is projected to grow another 19.8 per cent Those figures relate to all campaigns,
between 2006 and 2011. and in B2B it is much more difficult to
Ask anyone in the industry and they identify the link between email
will tell the same story: B2B marketers expenditure and increased sales.
have grasped the potential of email and However, it is possible, and in the past
are enthusiastically embracing it. Edward few years more and more B2B marketing
Weatherall, MD at email marketing departments have invested in the them. Marketing budgets are getting
service provider Concep, reports that in necessary tracking software and have also squeezed in several parts of the B2B
the year to April 2007 his agency become better at analysing the results. world, and so many marketers, having
delivered 5000 email campaigns on behalf The upshot is that email is fast becoming looked at the relative costs of direct mail
of its clients, and in the year to April 2008 the most significant weapon in the and email campaigns, are diverting their
it delivered 8500; a 70 per cent increase. armoury of the B2B marketer. budgets into digital.”
However, the overall success of email David Atkinson is the senior lecturer in However, he continues, “There is
marketing may yet prove to be its strategic marketing at Manchester significant doubt over whether this
downfall. It is producing such outstanding Metropolitan University’s Business approach works. The quality of cheap
results for so many B2B marketers that in School. He works with many B2B data can be highly questionable and the
many areas it is getting over used. This is marketers and has a slightly different response rates of these cheap, poorly-
prompting the more responsible and far- explanation for why email is becoming so considered campaigns are never very
sighted providers of email marketing popular amongst this group. He says, good. It’s getting more and more difficult
services to urge users to stop viewing “The great thing about email marketing is to reach B2B buyers with email. Every
email as a tool for short-term sales and to that it’s so cheap. It costs almost nothing B2B buyer I know has in the last year
start recognising its potential as a long- to go out, buy a few thousand email invested in a spam filter or an email
term brand-building tool. addresses and then fire off an email to blocking programme.”
The value of email
“Email is both highly intrusive and easy to
The main reason why email has become
so popular is that it can produce excellent
ignore or delete. We need everyone to
results for very little investment. In late
adopt a more responsible and respectful
2006, research from the US DMA showed
that the return on investment for email
approach to email marketing, but with
marketing was $51.45 for every dollar
the use of Blackberries and other mobile
spent, while the return on investment of
all non-email-related online marketing
email devices, the problem will only get
was $21.08; less than half that achieved
bigger”
by email.
By 2007, the yield from email had Richard Bush, MD, Base One
B2BM JUNE 08 – www.b2bm.biz
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